Odogwu, What’s Your Body Count?

It’s amusing that men haven’t realized that the same way they judge women by the number of men they have slept with is how women judge them too.

Wait! You sound surprised?

So, you think you’ll toast Sade, Nneka, Obata Obi, Bisi, Sadia, sleep with the girl from the gym, your colleague, your friend's friend, somebody you met at a wedding and one woman whose surname you probably never knew, and somehow come out of all this thinking you were the prize?

I apologize for being the one to break it to you but Sir, your body count matters too.

I know someone somewhere is already preparing his TED Talk about how men and women are different or how men are by nature polygamous. (Rolling my eyes.)

Please, don’t bother yourself with that tired logic.

For a very long time, men have convinced themselves that a Man is a Man and so he can sleep with half the continent because somehow, it’s a man’s world.

The belief is that if a woman has slept with a lot of men, then she is trash - she has no self-respect, no discipline, no values.

But if, on the other hand, it’s a man doing the sleeping rounds, then he is eulogized with several nice-sounding appellations - Odogwu, Playboy, Demon, Tiger in the sack. Nobody talks about self-respect or discipline anymore.

In fact, depending on the kind of friends he keeps, they’ll hail him and treat him like a legend.

Unfortunately, brother, there is nothing impressive about this mess.

A man who has shared himself like a party pack is easy, lacks self-control and will fall for anything, including your friends and close female relatives.

There is always talk about a woman’s “body count” and what it supposedly says about her.

How many men? What kind of men? Was she promiscuous when she was younger? Can she be trusted? Is this someone they would want to marry?

And while all this investigation is going on, nobody is questioning the man.

Lord Sherlock Holmes. What about you?

King of all Detectives.

What’s your body count? What are we dealing with here?

Why are your numbers suddenly meaningless?

Because men feel that the more women, they have slept with, the more desirable they are.

Nope!

A woman, particularly one considering you seriously, may be looking at that same history very differently.

She may wonder:

Were you choosing these women, or were you simply sleeping with whoever said yes?

Why did you need that many women? How do you view sex? Is making love intimate for you or is it like running track and field at the Olympics?

She will definitely wonder about your judgment and how much respect you have for your own body.

Women have standards too. If you sleep around too much, there are women who will lose respect for you and quietly reconsider you because, yes, women can find promiscuous men cheap too.

So, if you didn’t know it before, as a man, you need to respect your body too. Just like you wouldn’t put any kind of food into your body, show some restraint with your sexual appetite too.

Stop saying yes to everything.

You aren’t the public incinerator.

If you can look at a woman’s sexual history and decide it tells you something about whether you want her, she can look at yours and do the same thing.

You don’t get a special pass because you’re a man!